


Hard Way Home

by CurseUndone



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Additional Tags to Be Added, Cain and Abel's story is heartbreaking, Crowley Needs a Hug (Good Omens), Crowley character study, Crowley goes by "Crawly" for a LONG time, Crowley is a dumbass, Grief/Mourning, Hell sucks, LOOK it's not constantly angsty but we are gonna be hurtin' in here, M/M, Minor Character Death, Panic Attacks, Time Travel, from the Beginning to post-Armageddon't
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:40:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24129079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurseUndone/pseuds/CurseUndone
Summary: Time began with the Fall. Crowley never quite got a hold on it after that, but in fairness, that wasn’thisfault.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 39
Collections: Good AUmens AU Fest





	1. EDEN

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone!! This fic has been my pride and joy for the last three months, and I'm so excited to finally start sharing it with people!  
> I have a big chunk of the story drafted, and I am currently going through edits on the material I already have. 20 chapters is my current guess, so we have an adventure ahead of us. Hope you have fun reading!
> 
> I want to shout-out to all the folks in the Bookshop who have supported this project since day one, and in particular my lovely beta, Ams. This wouldn't exist without you <3

Three days after the Beginning, Hell was one thick haze of steam and heat. Its ceiling was tall and the cavern was wide, but every inch was as hostile as any other. Below, boiling hot lakes of sulfur, dotted with precarious outcroppings that were soaked in the spray of it, slick and burning on any exposed skin. With their prides freshly wounded and their anger still striking hot, the demons writhed and kicked and shouted at each other trying to climb out from the scalding sulfur onto the blistering rocks. They all stayed well clear of Satan as he pounded his great fists into the waves, screaming with rage over his defeat. In the sulfur, they thrashed, the echo of those screams reverberating and coming back double to ring in their ears. On the rocks, they snarled and shoved, close and clear enough to see others’ faces and threaten them, to smirk when they bested their opponent and tossed them back into the pit. Almost no one had thought to take to the air. It was all steam, hot enough to sear, not much better than the pits themselves, and it clung so close that any creature in it would be forced to fly blind.

For Crawly, it wasn’t as bad as that. It was uncomfortably hot, and the steam blocked his sight more than he’d like, but it was manageable, carefully teetering on _too much_. He was imaginative, and a bit desperate; the air was too hot to breathe, but somehow he could, tight sips between his lips; the fog was too thick to see through, but somehow he could, amorphous blobs in the gloom. He circled over the cacophony of Hell, round and round and round. Others could barely hear each other over the din of Satan’s screams, but Crawly heard the threats of Beelzebub below: “Ungrateful! Get your grubby hands off, bastards! I will rip you to pieces. You think the sulfur hurts? You think those angels could do damage? Wait until you see what _I_ can do.”

Crawly had been flying for three days. He hadn’t known Time would be so unbearable. He hadn’t known it would drag on. He could feel every second pressing into him. He was tired. The motion of turning, always turning, and flapping, always flapping, and thinking, always _thinking_.

Crawly told himself he was being useful. He was keeping watch, making sure Heaven’s forces didn’t descend upon them from Above and decimate them. But they had already been punished. They had been ripped away from the Host, from divine love and beauty and any peace; Crawly doubted they could pull out of their downward spiral to accomplish anything besides tearing each other apart. He could already hear them murmuring, “What has Crawly done? Hid on the sidelines and covered his ears, because he didn’t have the _spine_ to fight. Weak, stupid, crybaby Crawly. He’s practically a traitor.” If they didn’t destroy him, they would do worse. It stuck into his mind like a spike, like a wound that couldn’t close:

 _I’m doomed, I’m doomed, I’m doomed_.

If they didn’t destroy him, they would make him useful. No more hiding. They would give him some gruesome job, press a whip into his hands and tell him to use it. He couldn’t do it. He _couldn’t_.

 _Doomed, doomed, doomed, doomed, DOOMED_.

It was smothering. The air was too hot in his throat. He kept flying, but he was so tired. How had he ended up on the losing side when Lucifer had shined so brightly? Why had they decided there needed to be a War in the first place? Did She have to create Time at the very moment She pushed them into the Pit, letting that first moment stretch out so long he thought it would never end, and it wouldn’t end, no, it would _never end—_

He closed his eyes, fighting off a scream, and turned roughly to avoid crashing into the cavern wall. Like a mercy, the oppressive heat let up, and he opened his eyes to—

Crash onto the hard ground, barely keeping his feet, as he was suddenly confronted with a bustling street filled with bulky metal contraptions and stone-and-wood-and-glass buildings and paved roads, paved sidewalk, and a blue sky with misty gray clouds above and _humans everywhere_ , obstructing the view of everything else with their bustling bodies, so many and so fast he couldn’t process them and their multicolored clothes.

He started back and hid his wings away, not wanting to hit any of them. There he stayed, frozen in place, staring at the rapidly-moving chaos laid out before him.

Humans. Humans? There had been rumors before the Fall, new creations. But if these were humans, then that would mean—

Crawly gasped, an honest gulp of air that almost set him coughing. Mouth agape, he backed away until his back hit a building. They kept walking by, not sparing him a glance as their bright, lovely world kept moving forward.

 _This was Eden_.

“Darling, what are you doing pressed up against the door like that?”

Crawly jumped and nearly dashed his head against, yes, what appeared to be a door to look at the man-shaped being standing in the other half of the double doorway. _Man-shaped_ was the right word; power flared out from the figure like a banked fire, strong but contained. He was handsome, with white-blond tufts of hair and a fond, befuddled smile. An angel. No demon could look that much like sunshine.

“What?” Crawly said, bracing himself for the angel’s expression to sour once he realized that one of those vile fallen angels had shown up on his doorstep, so newly tainted that the smell of char must still cling to his skin.

“Oh, you just woke up. You’re always out of sorts after a long nap.” The angel tsked and corralled him with fluttery waves of his hands and somehow Crawly found himself moved out of the street and into the building. It was bursting floor-to-ceiling with bound paper and stuffed with a dizzying but cozy clutter, strange statues and musty, warm rugs. From the entrance, he was bustled into a side room and onto a dumpy sofa covered with blankets. He sank back into it without a thought, muscles melting under the sheer _comfort_ of it after three days and timeless more of constant strain. If he hadn’t been convinced before, this would have done it; this was Paradise.

“Did you have a good rest?” the angel asked, walking about the room with an aimless nervous energy, touching this or that without moving or doing much of anything.

“Er…not really.” The oddity of his situation struck him, sitting in an angel’s space, stretching out his legs and settling in on his sofa. A good rest? Is that what the angel thought the Fall was?

“I can see that.” The angel sat beside him, a bare six inches between them. A strange heaviness creeped over him, slowing his limbs. He hadn’t seen an angel since Time began. “If you were any less exhausted I expect you would be mortified by your outfit. Reminds me of old times.”

Crawly hummed, not quite bothered enough to ask what other outfit he was expected to wear. The angel was unfamiliar. They must have worked in different departments. Maybe he was one of those overfriendly types who spoke to anyone who would lend them an ear. A wonder that Crawly hadn’t ever met him.

When his thoughts drifted into indistinctness, Crawly realized he had closed his eyes. His exhaustion had turned physical, a deep, heavy languor that drooped his eyelids. A small panicked thought began to bounce around in his head, _what are you doing, where are you, this is your enemy_ , but it was warm here, a comforting warmth, and peaceful. He stirred half-heartedly, caught between the two impulses.

Something touched him, and he startled under it. The angel had softly laid a hand on his arm, right below his wrist where it laid against his leg. He shushed the demon, a murmuring shift of sound. “I appreciate you trying to see me, but you obviously still need to rest. It’s all right, you deserve it,” the angel told him.

“I do?” Despite himself, Crawly felt himself list to the side, sliding into a reclining position as his eyes drifted shut.

“Poor love, of course you do.”

Crawly blinked up at the angel and was struck breathless by the twinkle in his eyes, the fondness, the—the _love_ shining in them, directed straight at Crawly. His confusion started to gain shape, _who are you, why are you looking at me like that,_ and he tried to sit up.

“ _Rest_. You’re about to tip over,” the angel chided, and he pressed a gentle hand to Crawly’s chest. His resistance dispersed like a thin mist, and he sank back down. Then the hand lifted and carded through his hair, so unexpectedly warm and soothing his eyes closed immediately, turmoil forgotten with the angel’s soft voice in his ear and his hand combing through his hair with careful fingers.

“But…” he tried to say, but he lost the thread of his complaint before it left his lips.

“Don’t worry. I’ll still be here in the morning.”

Crawly fell asleep. He had never slept before. He hadn’t known he could. It embraced him like a blanket, like the last rays of light before they were sucked into a black hole. It was a deep, dreamless, healing sleep.

He rose out of it slowly. More calm and ordered than he had been for days and countless space before that, the facts presented themselves to him. He had been transported to Eden. He was an intruder, a demon in the land watched over by God and the angels. But instead of being smote and thrown back down to the bright-hot Pit, an angel had shown him kindness, so gentle it had soothed rather than further scraped him raw.

He blinked open his eyes. The ceiling was wooden, strong and sturdy. In an armchair close by, the angel sat at his desk, bathed in dim yellow light from two lamps. He was absorbed by something he was reading, bent over with a bit of wire and glass balancing on the end of his nose. He was strange. Rather than the expected Heavenly white robes that were a match to the black ones Crawly wore, he was dressed in tan and golden brown, with a bright splash of blue and a flash of gold. It was a relief to his eyes after the stark whites of Heaven’s towers and grimy gloom and black of Hell. This was the garb of Earth. Neutral ground.

“Hey,” Crawly said in a low voice, which he immediately regretted for how stupid it sounded.

The angel turned and smiled at him, a warm and shining thing that made Crawly avert his eyes, overwhelmed. “Excellent timing. The bakery just down the way is opening soon, and I thought we could walk there together.”

“That, uh, that sounds nice,” Crawly said helplessly, because it _did_ , even though he had no clue what a “bakery” was. New Earth vocabulary. Neutral ground. Maybe they wouldn’t have to fight anymore, maybe She had decided that it was enough. Angels, demons, War – Crawly had never liked all the conflict. He’d been terrible at it, in fact. Maybe this angel was the same way. Maybe here they could be kind to each other.

“Wonderful! Oh, and I’ve put a pair of your spectacles on the table there, since it seems you forgot yours at home.”

“My…?” Crawly pushed himself up to his elbows and followed the wave of the angel’s hand and spotted a pair of dark lenses attached to little metal arms.

“I do love seeing your eyes, but I know you dislike being out and about without them.”

Crawly picked them up, turned them around in his hands. The warmth of the compliment ( _I do love seeing your eyes_ ) wrestled with the uncomfortable dissonance of its familiarity. ( _I know you_.) There was nothing casual in it. They _must_ have known each other before, in Heaven. It didn’t feel like there were gaps in his memory, but so much of him had been warped: his wings, his aura, the sinuous shape he felt curling through the core of him, beneath his corporation. Why not his memories too?

It felt cruel to correct him with all of his, well, smiling. (Crawly was trying not to focus on the smiling; it made his heart do a disconcerting wobble.) He turned the glasses around in his hands, panicked that he didn’t know how to put them on until he realized how similar they were to what the angel had worn earlier, and he slid them on with a fumble. “Thanks. I, er, can’t believe I forgot about them.”

“No worries, dearest. We’ve had a frightful time as of late.”

Crawly chuckled, aiming for casual and missing by a mile. “Yeah. Lots of fighting and all that.”

“Yet surprisingly little bloodshed, it must be said.”

“Ah…sure.” He supposed no one had been wiped out of existence at any rate.

At Crawly’s uncomfortable expression, the angel closed his book and strode over. His hand twitched at his side but didn’t reach out. His expression flitted through so many different emotions Crawly couldn’t catch any of them. “Let’s not think on it,” the angel said. “Dour stuff, that. If we leave now and take a leisurely pace, the bakery should be open for a nice breakfast nibble.”

“Sounds nice,” Crawly said, throwing “nice breakfast nibble” on the rapidly-growing pile of new words he didn’t know.

He tried for a smile, and to his surprise, the angel blushed. His own face flushed hot, and he ducked his head down, grateful to his new spectacles for how they hid his wide eyes. The hand at the angel’s side twitched again, and this time whatever impulse was behind it won out and he reached out to touch Crawly’s chin and gently guide it upwards so they were looking at each other. The angel’s loving grin from earlier had turned giddy with how wide it stretched his lips, like his happiness was so big it was trying to burst out of him. “You are so _very_ precious to me, Crowley,” he said, almost hushed.

The shades were useless; the awe on Crawly’s face was painted bright and obvious. Was it possible not to remember this person, this emotion? It couldn’t be. But the glorious thing was that it didn’t matter. It was so sharp and strong in his chest, dizzying in his head that it didn’t matter at all. It was his, right now.

A different name, too, so close to his name after the Fall. _Crowley_. How smooth it sounded in his voice!

“Hnng, I…hh, I mean—” He started to nod but stopped himself so as not to displace the angel’s hand and settled for staring stupidly up at him instead, mouth agape.

The angel giggled and backed away, still filled with sunshine. “To the bakery?”

“Yeah.” He stood, and the two made their way to the door.

“Did you forget to change, dear?” the angel said, that smile sliding into a smirk.

“Oh. Right.” He looked down at himself, still clad in the black robe he’d been wearing in Hell. Panicked, he looked at what the angel had on, all those earthy hues and the light accents. The garb of Earth. He snapped and suddenly was clad in a similar style with some alterations: deep browns, a shorter coat, a red shirt under it, no tie, and everything tailored a bit more snug – the pants, he thought, he might have miracled _too_ snug, but it was too late to change it now.

The angel blinked. “That’s quite dashing. Not your usual style.”

Crawly shrugged to cover his nerves. “Trying it out.”

“Quite dashing,” he repeated, and Crawly could only splutter in reply.

Out on the street, the sky was dark with tinges of light filtering in from the east, and no one except the two of them were out, the air crisp and cool. Without the crowd of people and metal contraptions rushing by, Crawly could take it in properly without being overwhelmed. There were buildings of different sizes, taller and shorter, with large glass windows or cloth awnings. It was messy geometry, no lines quite meeting, the road itself a wiggly line splitting it all up. His eyes darted here and there, eager to catch every detail, the drop from the sidewalk to the paved road, the way the sidewalk met the base of the buildings, how the glass fit so seamlessly into its place in the walls.

Crawly peered up at the building he had stepped out of, which read on its face, to his bewilderment, _A.Z. FELL AND Co._ “What’s that stand for?” he blurted out before he could stop himself.

The angel peered up at the sign, as if inspecting it for the first time. “I never did tell you, did I? It’s a finagling of my name to fit into modern convention. A. Zira Fell.” He waggled his fingers. “Aziraphale! I think it’s clever.”

Something relaxed in Crawly’s chest – _Aziraphale_. “And the ‘Co.’?”

“Well, I suppose that’s you, my dear.”

Aziraphale held out his hand, a little shy, a little smug, and Crawly took it, and they walked down the street together in the growing dawn light.

Eden was beautiful. Crawly had expected that. But he had expected it to be cold and distant, too. So much of the time before Time had been setting up systems, assembling machines. The flare of a newborn star was dazzling, breathtaking, but the entirety of its creation had been contrived through a methodical, step-by-step process, and the star retained the dignity that came with being created so. This was nothing like a star with its overwhelming beauty. This was lived-in, cared for. The humans turned on lights and stuck their heads outside to blink into the early morning light and shuffled out, filling up the street or tumbling into their metal contraptions. Soon, the entire world was filled up with them, and the sunlight strengthened to greet them and brighten all their faces with its light.

They wore bags on their shoulders, they walked with each other and laughed, they had eye colors of all sorts, they hummed along to tunes, they looked up at the sky, they wore high heels and flats and thick boots, they smiled, they grumbled, they lounged against buildings, they jogged, they ate, they rested, all so varied and energetic and independent and _alive_. There was nothing else like it, all those simple acts of living. None of it could compare to the bitter industriousness of demons or the single-minded organization of angels.

“It’s so full of life,” Crawly said as one of the vehicles broke the quiet by roaring by.

“Great and small,” Aziraphale said.

After a few blocks of walking – _how big is it?_ Crawly wondered – the two of them arrived in front of the bakery, which proclaimed in a bold and flowy font, _Bake a Diem_. Aziraphale let go of his hand to push open the door, and Crawly flexed his fingers, chasing the feeling of that warm grip. The bakery was a cozy place with a handful of chairs and a long glass display full of – well, what seemed to be a lot of brown bits, and round bits too. Not only was Eden full of life but also full of things Crawly neither recognized nor could figure out the use of. Like all the roofs, those were new. Why didn’t they let that lovely sunlight in, instead of these colder, starker lights?

“Crowley?” That name was again. Where had it come from? Aziraphale was standing at the display, right in front of the human behind it. Rather than reply, Crawly made an inquisitive noise. “Anything for you?” the angel asked, gesturing at the display.

Crawly stared at the bits, attempting to divine their purpose. “Nahh,” he settled.

Aziraphale nodded and turned back to the human. They exchanged a few words and a few items, and with a wave and a goodbye the angel and the demon were back on the street, “nibble” successfully acquired.

The nibble part soon became clear enough; as they walked, Aziraphale unwrapped a section and took bites of the bit he had acquired, making little happy noises with each one.

“How did you make it all so quickly?” Crawly asked.

“Make what?”

Crawly craned his head around. “All of this! Or did She do it?”

“As in—” Aziraphale’s brow knitted, and he pointed upward. “ _Her_?”

Crawly snorted. “Yeah, who else? I mean, it had to be the angels or Her. Humans haven’t been around long enough.”

Aziraphale stared at him. Less loving and gentle as it was before and more _goodness, how is your head this empty?_ “Crowley, are you…,” he began, and then trailed off, squinting at the demon in front of him.

“Am I what? What? It’s been three days. It must have been Her. She likes popping things into existence without any warning. Inconvenient, really, one second – well there weren’t seconds yet – one second you’re trying to mix elements together and then the next thing you know _atoms_ exist and—” Crawly was working himself into a proper babble when suddenly Aziraphale touched his arm, and he shut his mouth abruptly.

“Crowley, I think…” He paused again. This time, Crawly waited in nervous silence, unsure of what exactly he had done to prompt that serious and searching look to the angel’s face. After another tense moment, the two of them standing in the middle of the street, the sunshine bright on them both, Aziraphale’s face softened. “Only three days? It feels like much longer, doesn’t it?”

Crawly let out a breath of relief. “You’re telling me. At least the whole War business got sorted out before Time was invented. It’s weighty. Dunno if I could’ve handled three _days_ of War.”

Aziraphale’s hand flew to his mouth to stifle the loud laugh that startled out of him. “Three days! Oh yes, that’s truly a dreadfully long time for a War. Imagine if it had been a week! Or more!” Something about this made him laugh harder, and Crawly chuckled too, hoping that maybe laughing would make the joke more obvious. (It didn’t.)

The demon shook it off. “Let’s go on.”

Aziraphale calmed down a bit, sniffed, and gave Crawly another long, undecipherable look before smiling again. “Yes, let’s. It’s a perfect day to shut up shop and do nothing, I say.”

Crawly nodded.

Sat at a little table together, Aziraphale harangued him into having a piece of the brown bit he’d gotten – bread, he called it – and Crawly begrudgingly admitted it was nice enough, light but rich on his tongue, nothing like what stardust tasted like. He insisted he didn’t want anything else – it was Aziraphale’s, after all – but he took a few more bites at the angel’s insistence.

When it was gone, Crawly asked, “Don’t you have an assignment?”

Aziraphale waved his hand. “No, no assignment. Nothing to do anymore.”

Crawly nodded. Maybe it could be that simple.

They spent the rest of the day talking or quietly being around one another. Aziraphale asked how Crawly had gotten there, and Crawly responded honestly that he had only appeared on the street; Crawly asked if he had seen any other demons around, and Aziraphale told him he hadn’t, and no angels either; Crawly asked what his bound papers were called, and Aziraphale told him they were books, which led to a vigorous discussion about how silly the names for things were, wherein Crawly quickly lost the thread of his own complaint about “bread” and fell to laughing at Aziraphale’s incensed condemnations of “scientific terminology,” which apparently always sounded unpleasant to the ear. The conversation flowed easily, and when it subsided, Crawly began to poke around the stacks of books the angel kept.

The more he looked, the more amazed he became by the sheer amount of them, with only a handful of repeats. _Canterbury Tales_ , _Faust_ , _The Picture of Dorian Grey_ , _Frankenstein_ , _Don Quixote_ , _The Aeneid_ , _A Study in Scarlet_ , _The Tale of Genji_ , _Pride and Prejudice_ , _Anna Karenina_ —they just kept going on and on, great and small, stacked sideways on top of each other or neatly in a row or haphazardly shelved backwards or upside-down. He touched their spines, took one out to turn around in his hands, and he was so caught up in the delicate gold leaf or intricate stitching on the covers he forgot all about their contents until Aziraphale found him wondering over a delicate vine pattern on a book entitled _Wordsworth’s Collected Poetry_.

“ _Tintern Abbey_ is wonderful, of course, if you’d care to read it,” Aziraphale said, a laugh half-formed in his mouth.

Crawly handed it over, and Aziraphale paged through it with a familiar hand. “ _And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man: a motion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things. Therefore am I still a lover of the meadows and the woods and mountains._ ”

Crawly realized his eyes had drifted closed, and he tilted his head back to smile at Aziraphale where he had closed the book again over his finger. “A human wrote that?”

“They wrote all of this.” He gestured around them.

Crawly looked around with renewed awe. “ _All_ of it? How could they do that in three days?”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Aziraphale intoned with vague but firm reverence, and before Crawly could press him, he continued, “Would you like to hear more?”

Books pulled from the shelves stacked up as Aziraphale pulled more and more and read bits and pieces of them aloud, making Crawly sigh or laugh. One of them mentioned a “ship,” and Crawly asked whatever that meant, which led to Aziraphale explaining things like anchors and treasure, and it wasn’t long until they had set the books aside and moved to the sofa. Knee against knee, the angel described airplanes and television and fireworks, tirelessly answering Crawly’s questions, occasionally fetching a book with an interesting illustration.

When he had been told so much that the new knowledge began to buzz under his skin, Crawly popped up from the sofa and returned to poking around the shop (that’s what Aziraphale had called it, though how he described a “shop” contradicted what he said about “not selling anything”), a less demanding task. He examined now the detail on the tables and then a worn bust and then traced over the walls, until a ray of light from a window struck him in the face. Outside, the sun had sunk in the sky and sat over the tops of the buildings, preparing to tip under. He leaned against the window sill and watched as it slowly, slowly inched its way down, like it was carefully picking out its path. As he lingered, the warmth soothed something cool and coiling within him, and he leaned his head on the glass, soaking it up. Already, it grew weaker as the building started to block it. He hoped it would come back soon.

“Time for sleep?”

Crawly whipped his head to the side, ready to run, but it was only Aziraphale. “I wasn’t sleeping,” he said, though a soft darkness had settled over the shop, and a cozy weight pulled at him.

“Come on, let’s get you settled. After all, sleeping at night is the done thing.” Aziraphale held out a hand, and though he wanted to protest, he was already reaching for it. It was warm and strong, and it was terribly exciting to be held and led through the shop to the backroom like he was being escorted through a strange land.

Crawly melted down onto the sofa, already half-way to sleep. He kept his hold on Aziraphale’s hand, forcing him to sit on the edge with an amused huff. After a moment’s wiggling, Crawly raised a hand and miracled off his coat and shoes. He sighed and tilted his face towards Aziraphale. “What about you? Aren’t you going to sleep?”

He shook his head. “Oh dear, no. Bit of a waste of time to me.”

“You said it was the done thing. I thought angels always did the done thing.”

“Angels and demons...” Aziraphale looked off to the left, towards his stacks, for a distant minute, and then turned back to Crawly. “It’s not as simple as all that, is it?” Wordless, Crawly stared up at him until he continued, “No worrying about that now, all right? Time to sleep.”

Before Crawly could insist he was thinking too much to sleep, Aziraphale moved his thumb over the back of Crawly’s hand, a small, simple motion that captured all of his attention. He relaxed. The angel would lead him through this strange land, too.

When he woke the next morning, he rolled away and cracked an eye open, hoping to watch the angel reading at his desk as he had yesterday. Aziraphale was not there. “Aziraphale?” he called out into the shop and received no answer. “Aziraphale!” he tried again. Nothing.

Crawly rolled onto his back, rolled onto his side facing the back of the sofa, rolled to his other side. Something was rushing into his limbs, something that stiffened his blood and slowed his movements, that made his breath shorten as it froze in his lungs. He fought through it to sit up and tiptoe through the shop, pausing at the ends of shelves to peek around the corners and stopping at every creak and groan of wood to listen. He snuck to the front entrance but stalled several feet away. What if he opened the door, and there was no one? What if he fell straight back into Hell? What if the angel had only been humoring him? What if he said something – _asked_ something – and the angel had deserted him, was reporting him at this moment to the archangels? He would be punished. He would be—of course, stupid, gullible, _lonely_ Crawly had fucked it all up by believing that fluttering hope in his chest.

He was on the sofa, somehow, half-collapsed on it, his breath coming in sips and then gasps, fingers clenched tight into the fabric beneath him. What had he done? _Nothing, as you always do, nothing and nothing, you are so_ weak, _and you are alone as always_. His arrival in Eden had been incompetence, no skill, not even luck, incompetence—

Vaguely, he registered movement in front of him, but his head had tilted away and he could only make out the impression of a figure. They sunk down.

“Breathe, darling.”

He didn’t try to decipher the words but let them roll over him, unheard.

“Listen to my voice. It’s all right. Just listen.”

It was calm, jarringly so. Through the blur of his flash-frozen thoughts, he struggled to focus.

“Take a breath in, and let it out. Whatever you can manage. Yes, love, it’s me. Breathe for me? In…out, there you are.”

Aziraphale.

By the time Crawly came back to himself enough to piece together what had happened, he had been bent over his knees drawing in and pushing out lungfuls of air for a while. When he looked up and saw Aziraphale’s face properly, he held out his hand and Crawly took it gratefully, and the scene began to settle.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said. He looked cut, and if Crawly were any more aware, he would have felt a matching stab. “I popped out for a moment, I promise, and never meant to cause you any distress. I should have thought of you.”

Crawly nodded heavily. “It’s okay. You…”

“Just went out for something sweet. Thought that we could share.” Aziraphale quirked a smile.

Crawly took a deep breath. “Yeah?”

Sat together on the couch, getting crumbs everywhere, they shared a small batch of – donuts, apparently. Aziraphale, for some reason, didn’t seem to care for them much but kept encouraging Crawly to eat more, insisting, “I’m a bit picky when it comes to sweet things, but you seem to like them fine,” and he did, more than fine.

Once they finished eating, Aziraphale suggested that they take a walk, and Crawly snapped back on the clothes he’d removed yesterday, and they went out. The sunlight was already almost to its full strength for the day, and the people were speeding by, walking fast, driving faster, going around in larger groups. Crawly looked but said nothing. There was a chill stuck inside him, making him hesitant to even think those questions of _how much time has passed?_ or _do those metal boxes run on fuel like an airplane does?_

Nevertheless, Aziraphale chattered, pointing at the buildings or the people or any eye-catching object they passed. His explanations weren’t very good; of an animal that a human walked on a tether, he said, “Oh, and that’s a dog. They’re loud, furry things humans like to keep in their homes. Come in all shapes and sizes.” But he kept talking, and when Crawly tentatively added in a simple, “Oh?” he beamed, and Crawly couldn’t help but smile back.

They made their way to a grassy area with walkways and trees. Without looking around, Aziraphale sat on a particular bench, and Crawly slumped into the place beside him, until he got antsy and popped back onto his feet to examine the trees more closely, then to stare at the animals floating in the water nearby.

“Would you like to feed them?”

Crawly turned back to Aziraphale and frowned. “Feed them? We didn’t feed the dog we saw.”

The angel rose from the bench and walked over. “But we do feed ducks.”

“Ducks.” Crawly leaned over the fence to get a better look at them as they milled about aimlessly between short bouts of violence. “Do they have feet?”

After a full half hour, Crawly could not say he understood ducks better, but it was satisfying to feed them the peas Aziraphale miracled, and he liked how they could be both elegant and ungainly. Silly creatures.

The rest of the day passed in a similar unhurried fashion: they walked around the “park,” they rested on a sunlit bench (Crawly sprawled out for maximum sun exposure), they explored whatever small shops that caught Crawly’s eye, Crawly peered at and inside every “car” parked on the street for half an hour, asking more and more specific and ridiculous questions (“Why does this one have a front like an angry face?” or “Why are they so _smooth_?”), and on and on they went until the sun approached the tops of the buildings, and Aziraphale led them to a tiny restaurant where only they and a couple others were patrons, Crawly tried one of Aziraphale’s oysters and promptly spat it back out, much to the angel’s amusement, and they talked, the lighting was dim and close, not like cave walls but a warm blanket pulled over your head, and they walked back to the shop hand-in-hand.

“Time for sleep,” Crawly said, flopping down on the sofa. He struggled with pulling off his shoes, gave up, and then miracled them off with his other things.

Aziraphale sank into his chair with a sigh. “It’s times like these that I understand why you sleep so regularly.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Never got the knack for it, and, well, why would I rest when I don’t need it and when I could read or listen to Schubert or any number of other things instead?”

“It’s _very_ nice.” To demonstrate, Crawly snuggled down into the sofa. He closed his eyes but quickly realized something was missing. He threw out his arm. “Come here.”

Aziraphale took his seat on the edge of the couch, exactly as he had yesterday. He took the hand that Crawly had held out and kissed the backs of his fingers and smiled when he saw Crawly’s shy grin. “Better?”

Crawly squirmed and pulled at him. “Go to ssssleep with me.”

“The sofa is much too small for that.”

“Make it bigger then!”

“I really don’t usually.”

“For me, angel?” Crawly pouted up at him with all the melodrama he could muster.

After four valiant seconds, Aziraphale caved. “Oh, you really are a devil,” he said, but it was so warm it didn’t smart. “I am at least wearing proper sleep clothes. I’ll be back.” He patted Crawly’s hand and disappeared into the space upstairs, soon reappearing dressed in soft, loose blue clothes. He snapped, and suddenly the sofa under Crawly doubled in size. “Serves me right for not investing in a bed, I suppose,” Aziraphale muttered as he grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch and laid down as he drew it over them. “Happy?” he said to Crawly.

Instead of answering, Crawly snuggled under Aziraphale’s arm to lay his head on the angel’s chest, his hair vibrant against the pale blue of the angel’s shirt. It felt – his breath stuttered in his chest from how strong, sudden it was – _right_. “Yeah,” he whispered.

Aziraphale’s hand stroked Crawly’s side in steady, soothing motions. “Good,” he said, equally quiet. Crawly fell asleep warm and held close.

He stirred into half-awake awareness twice, still enveloped in that warmth, held _closer_ , one arm slipped around his waist and the other curling up to cradle his shoulder blade, and slipped away again into sleep. The third time, he hummed and squeezed Aziraphale back and murmured a good morning into his skin. When Aziraphale asked him how he was, he hummed happily, and the angel pressed a kiss into his hair. Aziraphale was reluctant to let him go, asking him if he had enough rest, and Crawly laughed and poked at him for how accommodating he was considering how he had protested the night before. They grinned at each other and chuckled and got ready for the day.

When they were dressed, they set the sofa to rights and went to the bakery together. Aziraphale convinced him to try another pastry, which Crawly somewhat sulkily confirmed he liked very much and complained that the angel guessed too accurately. On the walk back (his pastry long consumed), Crawly took in the early light and the quiet, streamlined cars and the people, all existing together harmoniously and in such complement to one another, even the dirt on the streets. It beat Heaven in his books.

In the shop, they settled into their seats in the backroom. Aziraphale fiddled with the fancy black quill that sat on his desk. Crawly fussed with his outfit, trying out patterns and different materials that he’d seen, swapping the cut of his coat or the detail on his shoes. “What’s a day?” he wondered aloud.

“Hmm?”

“I’m not sure I ever figured it out is all. What’s a day?”

“Oh.” He focused from whatever he had been lost in thought about. “It’s a measure of time. Every time the sun comes up again, it’s a new day.”

“It’s been _three days_ since I got here?”

“Today’s the third day, yes.”

“Three days? Do they change? The first three days were _much_ longer, I’m sure of it.”

“Well, there’s an old saying—”

There was the roar of an engine outside. Immediately, Aziraphale shot to his feet, glancing between the door and Crawly as he made his way to the shop’s entrance. Curious, Crawly followed.

Outside, a door slammed, and then nothing.

Aziraphale, with a hand on the doorhandle, turned to Crawly and smiled, tense. “Stay here for a moment, dear?”

Crawly frowned, but took a step back and nodded.

“Thank you.” He opened the door and poked his head out, turning left and then right. “No one there,” he said to Crawly, a mysterious tension still in his voice. “Must have parked and left.”

Crawly opened up the other door and gasped at what he saw. Parked outside the shop in the spot that was always open was a _beautiful_ car. It had a distinctly different look than every other car Crawly had seen in his time in Eden, with a long, rounded bonnet and wide circles for headlights and a boxy roof. It was sleek without being streamlined, all flowing grace.

“Now _this_ is what I call style.” Crawly loped forward to get a better look at its elegant black lines and peer through the window to get a look at its upholstery.

“Crowley.”

Crawly stopped and looked back where Aziraphale had frozen in the doorway to his shop. “Yes, angel?”

He looked around at the street again and then strode forward. “Crowley.”

Despite his serious expression, Crawly laughed at how nonsensical he sounded and repeated, “Yes, angel?”

The angel didn’t hear him at first. He was stuck on something, eyes half-focused as he craned his head around, and then went still. Finally, he turned the entirety of his attention to Crawly. There was something surreal in his gaze, like he had shifted into another character, one that Crawly didn’t recognize. He held his shoulders straight, and he took a breath, eyelids fluttering.

He clasped both of Crawly’s hands in his. “I need you to know something. I need you to remember it and keep it close to your heart, even when you don’t believe it. Promise me?”

“I promise,” he said, still with a half-amused tilt to his mouth.

Aziraphale nodded. “I love you.” He squeezed his hands, held them to his chest. “I always have. Even when I didn’t know it, even when I denied it, I loved you. With all my heart, with all my soul. You have always been the most important thing in the world to me, even when I desperately didn’t want you to be. You are kind and loving, charming and wonderful and—oh, I couldn’t possibly tell you all the brilliant things that I love about you, because you are brilliant simply. My best friend, my…” Emotion seemed to get the better of him, and he grinned, and he looked so happy. Underneath, there was something, sadness or horror or pity, shining in the tears in his eyes, but his love was so strong it overwhelmed everything else, washing over Crawly and sweeping him away. “Do you understand?” Crawly nodded, but he didn’t, really, numb with how much he was feeling. “Good.”

Aziraphale let go of his hands and backed up a step. “I’m sorry, love, got away from myself. I should have said that a long time ago.” He reached up to wipe away his tears with both hands.

Crawly nodded his head up and down dumbly. “Thank you.”

Aziraphale smiled, small and gentle and fond. His mouth opened to say something, but the world melted around Crawly, the car and the street and the people and the angel, and he blinked, and it was replaced by a dull, thick glowing and darkness and drab grey rock under his feet.

He looked around, his heart still so full with Aziraphale’s confession that he could barely see it, until a voice snapped, “Crawly! There you are!” and he turned to see the bitter, grimacing face of Beelzebub, flies buzzing unpleasantly loud.

He was in Hell.

“Finally. It’s like you dizzappeared.” Beelzebub looked him up and down, unimpressed. “Where did you get off to?”

“I—I—” Crawly scrambled, panic swiftly replacing the stunned sweep of love. “I was working! I was—er, well, in Eden. I—”

“We know what you did in Eden. It wazz good work. You’re getting a commendation for it. Imagine those humanzz, thrown in the muck like us. All She knowzz how to do anymore, I bet.” Beelzebub sneered, and then kicked a loose rock into a nearby sulfurous pit. Several of the rocky platforms had been crudely pushed together into a wider platform. Everything was still slick and burning, still loud and raucous, but demons moved around, not just fighting or screaming but carrying things and shouting orders. Satan had fallen silent.

Crawly shifted on his feet. He grabbed the edges of his coat to hide their shaking. What had he done? He hadn’t done anything. Fear sliced through him, a noxious mix of self-preservation and horror at the humans’ fate so vaguely alluded to. What could have happened that he hadn’t been able to see?

“Congratulations,” they drawled. “Hope you liked it up there, because it’s been decided you’re the best demon for the job.”

“I am?”

They ignored him. “Now get up there and keep making trouble!”

Crawly quickly nodded, half out of eagerness and half not to seem ungrateful for the opportunity.

With a lazy swing of their hand, they indicated the side of the cavern, where a new passageway had been carved. “We’re still digging out the proper entrance, so you’ll have to dig your way up again.”

“Er, yeah, that’s fine.”

There was a pause where the two of them stood and looked at each other without speaking, and then Beelzebub shouted, “What are you waiting for?” and Crawly piped, “Right!” and scrambled away, taking a short run and then shaking out his wings to take flight. He flew up and up and up to the top of Hell’s steam-filled cavern; the rock of the ceiling appeared suddenly, and he panickedly thought, _just go through right to Eden break right through_ , and then he slid into it, a tight and uncomfortable embrace as he continued to rise and rise for minutes, tens of them, maybe hours – Crawly, despite his three days in Eden, still hadn’t quite gotten a feeling for the increments of time yet – until he gasped and broke through the dirt and found sky.

Breathing hard, he remained collapsed on the ground and stared unseeing at the horizon. For a moment, he thought he was in Heaven it was so empty and blank, but then the wind kicked up and spat sand into his face, the type of messiness Heaven would never stand for. But there were no signs of Eden either. No streets or shop or humans milling about. It had all vanished like a mirage; minutes ago, mere _minutes_ ago, he had stood on the hard street as his angel confessed his love and asked him to remember. Somewhere, he must be out there, maybe fretting about where and why Crawly had suddenly disappeared.

Invigorated, Crawly got to his feet and shook out his wings (only serving to throw more grit into his eyes) and took off. The desert was wide, stretching on and on, but he kept searching, kept flying, yelling, “Aziraphale! Aziraphale!” The desert was wide, and it seemed to go on forever, like those long flights through the void to help haul a star into its place in the sky, but there had been no _counting_ then, and every second now widened the distance between then and now and _where on Earth could he be?_

In the end, Crawly found him standing listlessly on the top of a dune wringing his hands.

“Angel!” Crawly swooped down and landed beside him.

Aziraphale startled, but when he saw that it was Crawly he settled back to his hand-wringing. “Oh, er, hello. Back for more evil-doing, I suppose?”

“I’ve been looking for you! What happened to it?”

Aziraphale took a step back and looked around, brows knitted. “What happened to what? If you are up to something like that apple of yours, I won’t allow it.”

Crawly barrelled past that odd comment. “What happened to your shop? The—the _everything_? Eden! You’re not even wearing your Earth clothes.” He gestured down, where the angel had traded his prim and worn outfit for flowing white robes with gold trim.

Aziraphale glared at him. “I’m wearing the same thing.”

“What? No, you aren’t.”

“ _You’re_ wearing something different, and you’ve—”

“I am _not_!”

“—you have some gall to ask about Eden when you know very well what you’ve done.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“I don’t know what you’ve concluded after the storm, but that was a one-time event. I will have no more of it.” Aziraphale raised his chin, defiant.

“What are you on about?” Crawly stepped closer, hands reaching out. Aziraphale had liked them close, holding hands or their feet resting against each other or a bare armslength of space between them. It had started to settle something wild and hurt in Crawly’s chest, easing into a simple comfort, it had been so unexpectedly kind.

His hand skimmed the angel’s before Aziraphale reeled back, his eyes wide. “Stay back!” He pointed at the demon’s face. “If I still had my sword, you—you would be dust, foul fiend! Thoroughly smote dust!”

Crawly gaped at him, stunned into silence. He forced his mouth to move, fumbled out, “N-no, I—”

Aziraphale shook out his wings, brilliant white, and said, “Stay away from the humans, demon. I’m meant to protect them from your dark workings.” He took off, kicking up sand as he flew up and off into the horizon.

“Aziraphale!”

The angel paused, held mid-air, and then half-turned to face Crawly. “Yes?”

The sun hit all his feathers and threw them into a dazzling glow, his hair radiant with it, a true shining spectacle of an angel. And Crawly was on the ground, covered in dirt. “Good luck.”

He was too far to make out Aziraphale’s expression, but he hovered there for a long moment staring back at Crawly until he raised a hand in a tentative wave and flew away.

Crawly sunk down into the sand. He stuck his hands into the warmth of it. What had he done? What had he _done_? The desert dunes were empty, a scouring sort of lonely. No streets, no cars, no people, and the angel was fast disappearing.

The sun beat down.


	2. ABEL

There were two humans.

His curiosity overruled any hesitancy he had after Aziraphale’s warning, and the nagging thought that it must have been a show of some kind, a bluff made to protect him after whatever had happened in Eden.

There they were, leaning against each other. Aziraphale was nowhere to be seen, and neither was there anyone else. Only two humans sitting together, barely covered against the harsh sun. Crawly watched them from afar, so far that they were more one figure than two. No one else. It wasn’t right, human beings so alone. Always he had seen them together, bumping into each other and talking each other, always.

He turned away from them and took to the air. They were out there; they could not have been _erased_.

From the desert he found a jungle, but there was no one within its thick underbrush. From the jungle he found the coast, but there was no one walking on the beach. From the coast he dived under the ocean, but there the sky didn’t even look the same. From the ocean he climbed mountains, but when he stood atop a peak and shouted, “Hello! Hello!” no one answered. He kept searching, wide plains, dazzling ice expanses, winding rivers. “Hello! Hello!” Not only did he find no one, _nothing_ , but the newness of it all made his head spin. His hands turned red when he gripped ice, there were _endless_ types of animal (and he had thought ducks were strange!), he could float in water, there were mountains that could spit magma, his skin was fragile, there were black caves that plunged into the earth, and a thousand thousand other things.

But no one ever answered his call. No shop. No buildings. No humans.

Out of the ground, a hot spring bubbled, steam rolling up and dispersing into the air. He sank into it, a soothing heat to battle his racing thoughts. He hummed to himself, then sang into the air, but he soon stopped. Painful memories.

It had been…days. He wasn’t sure how many, they had dragged on so long. He hoped it had only been a few, a handful maybe. _Promise me_ , Aziraphale had said. _I love you_. And then he’d told him to stay away, _threatened_ him. He wasn’t here, and the world he had told Crawly about was gone. He had looked for the cars, the airplanes, the neat parks – they were gone. It was all gone.

“Why?” he asked the air and then felt silly. She wouldn’t answer his questions like Aziraphale had. But the words rose, unbidden. “You wouldn’t, would You? They were happy, they were—what would be the point of it? The whole _world_?” He breathed in a heavy, stuttering breath and leaned down into the water until it lapped at his ears. “You wouldn’t do that.”

Why had Aziraphale told him to stay away? There was nothing Crawly could do that was worse than _this_.

He kept searching.

Glaciers, valleys, savannahs, plateaus,

swamps, mountains,

seas, lakes, waterfalls,

islands,

deserts.

Leaflitter, thorns,

seashells, pebbles,

snow,

birdsong, honey, petals, moss,

grass,

sand.

He traveled to every continent, and then he flew around the world. He traced the coasts with his footsteps, he searched over every single region of the Earth. He called, and he called again.

This time, maybe, someone would hear him.

He saw birds fly when weather grew cold, he saw leaves die and grow again a fresh green, he smelled the different flowers that bloomed year-round, he watched animals grow white coats, he saw fish swimming upstream. In the extreme north and south, the sunlight disappeared for longer than he thought possible, and then it blazed unblinkingly for just as long.

On that everlasting day, he sat on the packed ice, shivering, watching black and white birds slide on their bellies and plunge into the ocean. The clothes he’d miracled in Eden were torn and dirty, the shoes long-abandoned and three buttons gone. The sunglasses he kept tucked in his coat pocket; he didn’t like how they darkened the world around him.

They were gone.

Except for two.

He found them – three of them now, a tiny one waddling beside them – in a shaded, forested place with a stream running nearby. They had built a small building out of the trees and earth, clothes from stitched-together hides, a firepit, and all sorts of other odds and ends, utensils and tools and even toys the little human carried around. Returning to this place, he had expected misery, but the remaining humans continued on, stubborn and chipper. He stayed back, not wanting to interfere in it. What they had was glass, and it would be easy to shatter it.

They sat together, one human talking to the giggling little one while the third painstakingly twisted cords of plant fiber together. One asked a question, and they passed the cord back and forth, tugging at it and twisting more together and comparing it to other materials. It was all very informative for Crawly, who had never gave a thought to things like _rope_ , but also frightfully boring, and without meaning to he nodded off against the tree he had hid behind.

“Oh!”

Crawly startled awake to one of the humans, the long-haired one, standing over him. They stared at each other for a few beats, and then she tilted her head and leaned forward.

“Those eyes—you’re the serpent.”

“Er, what?”

“I didn’t know you could look like a human. It’s good to see you.”

Crawly stared. “Nrngh?” he tried.

“The angel—” she scoffed “—told us that you were monstrously evil, but he usually doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and I don’t see how what you did was so evil. Life isn’t easy anymore, but it’s a lot more interesting.”

Crawly took a sharp breath, brushing his confusion aside to hone in on that familiar phrase. “The angel? Aziraphale?”

“Mmmhm.” She sat down beside him, legs crossed. “No other angels visit.”

There was silence as the two of them examined each other, the human cataloguing every piece of him with fast-flitting eyes, while the demon stared on in wonder. Despite the oddity of her greeting, despite all that had been lost, she seemed…bright. Friendly, extending a hand to touch the frayed edge of his sleeve. “Are you happy?” he asked.

It was her turn for surprise. “I’m happy,” she answered easily. “I have Adam, and the two of us have Cain, and we all have the Earth. Of course I’m happy.”

Crawly cracked a smile, and, like a plant nudging through rock, it bloomed into a wide flower.

“Come sit with us,” she offered.

“Okay,” Crawly said.

Her name was Eve, the other human Adam, and their little one, Cain. He sat with them, adjusting to their movements, their speech. Adam and Eve flowed into each other with ease, no thread of conversation left to awkwardly dangle, no gesture misunderstood. “Cain is—” Adam started, and Eve was already turning to sweep Cain away from the smoldering ash of their fire. Eve had an idea, and Adam was already articulating it, and they nodded in agreement together. When Crawly proved awkward and unresponsive to their attempts at including him in their discussion, they began to talk about the sheep they had started to keep.

A small wooden animal suddenly appeared, held by a small, chubby hand. “Wolf,” Cain said, staring at him.

Slowly, Crawly reached up to take the toy out of the boy’s hand.

Task accomplished, Cain plopped down on the ground. He grasped at the dirt around him until he found a stick and then thwacked the wolf – and _also_ hit Crawly. “Ouch!” he yelped, jerking back.

Cain pouted at him. When Crawly showed no signs of catching on, the boy told him, “Wolf _grrr_.”

“ _Grrr_ ,” Crawly repeated dutifully.

Cain grinned and thwacked him again.

So Crawly stuck around, and when the humans showed no signs of growing weary of him, he stayed. It only seemed right; he had been looking for the humans, and here they were.

“You’ve been around the whole _world_?” Eve said with awe.

“Ever since Eden.”

“Since Eden! You traveled the Earth for _years_.”

“Years?”

“That’s what we’re calling them, the time from one winter to the next. Adam is great at naming things. You have to tell us everything.”

So he tried. Those days had been so barren, full of an empty but colorful wonder, but Eve’s eager questions, the excitement on their faces, breathed new and vibrant amazement into those memories. He told them about mountaintops in the clouds and rainbow reefs of coral, of enormous animals with big ears and long trunks.

“Oh!” Adam interrupted, laying aside the short sword he had been crafting a sheathe for in order to give Crawly his full attention. “That’s called an _elephant_.”

Curious, Crawly described a type of waterfowl with a bill and webbed feet, and Adam told him it was called a duck. “A duck!” Crawly repeated. “I knew that one.” They spent the rest of the day telling Crawly the names of all the animals he had encountered, and, in return, Crawly told them where they lived these days, since apparently it was different than it had been in Eden.

When Crawly described a long, limbless reptile with fangs, Eve laughed. “That’s a snake!” she said before Adam could. “How did you know _duck_ but not _snake_?” Her laugh tumbled into a full gale, and she threw her head back and grabbed Adam’s shoulder, who happily joined in on her glee.

“Why should I have known that?” Crawly asked when their giggles had subsided.

“You are one,” Eve told him. “When we met in the garden, you were a snake. An enormous one, too.”

Crawly frowned. “We haven’t met before.”

Adam and Eve exchanged looks, speaking a silent language only they were privy to. “You told me about the apple,” Eve said. “In Eden. You don’t remember?”

“I never met you in Eden. You must be mistaken,” Crawly insisted.

“But you _did_.” Eve looked to Adam, and he nodded. “You told me your name, and the first thing the angel asked us after he shooed us away was if we had seen the demon Crawly and told us to be wary of him if we did. Which is ridiculous. You’re very nice.”

“I never met you in Eden,” Crawly repeated.

“But you did!” Eve said.

“ _No_.” A snag pulled taut in Crawly’s chest. It was painful, terrifying, too much. If he pulled on it, the string would break. “No, you’re wrong.”

Eve squared her shoulders, ready to press the point, but Adam touched her arm, his brows knit together. They exchanged another look, and Eve examined Crawly again in the same manner she had hours ago. “Of course,” she said, relaxing. “My mistake.”

Adam prompted him with a question about birds, and the conversation fell back to a comfortable rhythm.

Aziraphale was there, too, sometimes. Eve told him that the angel kept to a strict routine: every other week, he walked into camp at noon and then left within the hour. “All he does is stand around awkwardly – and I _do_ mean awkwardly. I haven’t been alive very long but I know awkwardness like that when I see it.” Crawly made himself scarce when the time came. He never asked, but the more he heard about Aziraphale, the more different, the more _wrong_ he seemed. He was afraid that if he saw him again he would glimpse some horror beneath his gentle face.

Those first weeks, he spared a thought for Hell. Years, Eve had said, not days, and they had sent him no further instructions, no communication at all.

“‘Keep making trouble,’ they said. What does that mean?” he wondered aloud.

Eve made a considering noise. “Well, I was tempted into eating something.” She mentioned this a bit too lightly to be anything other than a polite nudge at her strange belief they had met in a garden, but he ignored this.

“You think that would work again?”

Eve snorted. “Probably not.”

Cain made a huffy noise from where he sat in Eve’s lap, and Crawly reached out to poke his nose. “Maybe I could convince this one to make some trouble.”

“Oh please, he makes enough of it.”

It was so amorphous, so pointless, so unnecessary after the punishment already given, the half-hearted worry dissipated. He became another set of eyes to watch Cain, another set of hands to cook dinner, another voice to fill the air as they worked or rested or played. He helped Eve invent games to play, he learned to carve wooden figures for Cain, he listened to Adam when he rambled. Eve made new clothes for him to replace his old Edenic rags. When Abel was born and the combined mischief of two small boys threatened to destroy camp, Crawly became more essential than ever before, constantly bombarded by demands to play or pleas to take care of this or that business while Adam and Eve took a nap or worked out the logistics of how and when to water the crops they’d planted.

It was during this constant whirlwind of time that he forgot about the angel’s weekly appearance.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. The angel stood fifteen feet away, too far for a comfortable conversation. He frowned at Crawly. “You’re here.”

“Have been.” Adam had told him they made no secret of his staying with them, though he had kept mum on Aziraphale’s reaction to that information, and Crawly hadn’t asked.

“You…” Aziraphale pointed at Abel, who was asleep in Crawly’s lap. “Hmmph.”

“How are you?” Crawly asked. It was one of Eve’s favorite inventions, and Crawly had become used to it being exchanged every time he saw someone after a long walk or first thing in the morning. It was a simple question that spoke of love, and it stuck in his throat looking at the angel and his closed-off expression, but it was the only thing to do.

“I am tip-top,” Aziraphale said without an ounce of joy in his face.

He wanted to leave, and Crawly didn’t want to keep him where he didn’t want to be. “Okay.”

The camp fell to silence, except for Abel’s soft snores.

“Well…I’ll be on my way then.” And he left.

 _Promise me_ , Aziraphale had said. _I love you_. A cruel lie or a threadbare belief. How else could the angel look at him like that, full of disappointment? It was enough to punch his heart open. Eden was gone.

The little human family was a salve. Adam and Eve became his close friends – reliable Adam with his big, friendly laugh, and quick-witted Eve, usually the one to make Adam laugh – and their children were dear to him like nothing else. The boys grew fast, each inch like its own mark of time, and their parents were tireless. Cain always had energy, running, jumping, playing, though he was quiet, a steady background of industrious activity, while Abel liked to sketch things in the dirt and tell stories, liked to nap all day and stay glued to someone’s side when he wasn’t. Adam taught them how to hunt and forage, and Eve taught them how to use all they’d gathered, but it was Crawly who spent the day rolling around in the dirt with them, who rattled off about trees taller than fifty of him and endless fields of ice, who healed their scrapes, who reconciled their brotherly arguments when neither Adam nor Eve could get through to them, who wept with them when their favorite sheep was killed, the one Abel had looked after all by himself since it was a lamb.

Adam tried to create a word for Crawly, but none of them fit: not the “demon” that described him simply, not parent, not brother, not son, not friend, not companion, not guardian. The closest he got was clapping his hand on Crawly’s shoulder and saying, “You’re not one of us, but you’re one of _us_ , you know? You’re family.”

Aziraphale scolded him. “What are you doing with them? What unholy influence are you putting into their minds?”

“Look,” Crawly said, irritated. “I love them.”

“Love? You’re a _demon_.”

 _It’s not as simple as all that, is it?_ Aziraphale had said. He had been lying; he had learned the angel lied constantly. “And?” he said. “You’re not an idiot, Aziraphale. Figure it out yourself.”

“No good can come out of this,” the angel said, but Crawly had already turned his back to him.

When Cain was sixteen and Abel was twelve, Crawly took them on a trip outside their home ground, far from where Adam and Eve had spent so many years pouring their work into the earth. After Cain begged in a very dignified manner, Adam allowed him to take his sword for “protection”. (Adam and Crawly shared an eye roll over Cain’s head.) Cain wore it proudly on his waist, puffing up his chest and striding back and forth. It was the only time he was chatty, when he was excited about a new thing he could do, overflowing and needing everyone to see it, too. It could be irritating, but it was one of Crawly’s favorite things about him. The kid needed to talk more, spend less time sulking in trees, which was a perfect mirror to his brother, who needed to learn when to shut up.

The moment they lost sight of camp and began their trip in earnest, Abel started babbling. “Why haven’t we done this before? There’s so many interesting things out there, and we’ve been sitting here seeing none of it. That’s so boring! Who knows what could have changed since you last saw it, Crawly. There could be—tiny horses! Or, or a giraffe and a fish could’ve had a kid and now there are _giraffe fish_. I bet—”

Cain, on the other hand, was ridiculous in his own way, looking around, stonefaced with how seriously he concentrated, a hand on the hilt of Adam’s sword.

Every day, Crawly pointed them towards something he remembered as at least vaguely interesting and away they marched. Sometimes they did find something interesting, scaled a mountain top or sat on a ridge that overlooked a lake, but most often they talked and traveled, the simple pattern of day after day, mile after mile, bickering and laughing. Rather than wrestling as they used to when they were more evenly matched, Cain merely knocked Abel in the dust when the younger tried to fight. Most days, Abel whined until Crawly agreed to carry him on his back, where he fell asleep without fail within the hour. Most nights, they slept in a pile, Abel curled up, Cain holding Abel, and Crawly holding them both, glaring at the cold night air until it warmed up to something more comfortable.

“Crawly?” Cain said.

“Hmm?” Crawly was still fuzzy from waking up, wishing the clouds would hurry up and uncover the sun for a good morning bask. Abel had reluctantly gone off to gather breakfast, his turn for the task, leaving their camp in a beautiful, calming silence. Crawly breathed it in deep, savoring it.

“I want to go home.”

Crawly turned his gaze away from the top of the treeline to where Cain sat scrunched-up, his knees pulled to his chest, his face turned stubbornly away, though it only made his trembling lip more obvious. “Cain…”

“I know, it’s stupid. I was having fun, I was, but now I’m…not.” His jaw flexed, a sure sign he was frustrated with himself. “I know we said we were going to go for a few months, but I…” He swallowed.

“I was thinking the same thing, really,” Crawly said, trying to keep his tone light. As much as Cain hated explaining his own words, he hated conversations about himself even more. “There’s only so much walking you can do before you get sick of it.”

“Abel won’t want to go home,” Cain muttered.

“Oh nonsense, mention the sheep and he’ll be over the moon.”

He relaxed, uncurling from his nervous posture, and nodded. “Thanks.”

Crawly flashed him a grin. “Anything, kid,” he said, and laughed when Cain wrinkled his nose at him.

It was as simple as that. They needed something, and he did the best he could, immediately and without question. There was no use in wasting time, in mincing words, in doing anything but care for the things he cared about. Someone wanted an adventure, so they went out. Someone wanted to go home, so they did. (Abel, of course, was overjoyed to see the sheep.) It was as simple as that.

It was the core of those years he spent among them, that unspoken edict: make each other happy.

Years passed. He ignored Aziraphale, though the angel stubbornly kept visiting. Cain had never spared the angel more than a passing word, and Adam and Eve had long lost interest in him when he answered questions about God with “Oh, er, well—” and never accepted their offer to sit and talk with them simply. Abel was the only one never to give up on him, giggling at the angel’s uncertain stutters and asking every manner of question about God and angels and demons and faith, all of which overwhelmed Aziraphale so badly Crawly often had to call the kid off before he harangued the angel into actually discorporating.

When Abel was fifteen, at the age of peak irritation, his unending persistence and smirking curiosity perfectly aligned, Crawly had to physically shove the boy away lest he goad the angel for the next three hours. Aziraphale jabbed a finger at his disappearing back. “If that is not demonic influence, then I don’t know what is.”

Crawly doubled over laughing. “Then you don’t know what is!”

Adam and Eve were determined and handy, jacks-of-all-trades who could figure out how to do just about everything just about adequately if given enough time, but their children professed particular talents. Cain was best with the plants they grew, while Abel was good with the animals they kept. The two fought over the difference like it was a game, calling each other names and grinning when they successfully provoked the other. It was never serious, only the same sort of fighting they’d been doing their whole lives.

It was peaceful. Time passed like a pleasant dream.

 _Don’t wake up_ , Crawly instructed himself sternly. _That’s the problem with you. You always wake up when you should damn well stay asleep._

Crawly was humming along with the birds and picking out shapes in the clouds when Cain found him. It was summer, and the air was a steady blanket of scorching heat. A perfect day (the fourth in a row) for a layabout, especially now that both of the kids were fully-grown adults who could look after themselves.

“Crawly,” Cain said, his voice thick.

It was easy to miss the blood at first glance. Crawly wasn’t looking for it, didn’t even notice the sword clutched in his hand until after he saw Cain’s torn-open, desperate expression. Then the blood, a splatter on his chest, the sword gleaming with it like a macabre boast.

Crawly was up in an instant, grabbing Cain’s shoulders. “What is this? Cain, what happened?”

“I—” He was cut off by his own sob and collapsed forward into Crawly’s arms. Crawly tried to keep him close, but quickly he threw himself back. “Y-you have to—I—Abel, he’s…” His mouth gaped, wordless.

“Hey hey, calm down. If it was a wolf, it was probably just a bite. He’ll be fi—”

“I killed him!” Cain shouted. Screamed, in truth, it was so shrill.

Crawly froze.

Cain dissolved into wracking sobs, his whole body jerking with the force of them.

“He’s—he’s out in the field by the—by—by the—” He hiccupped repeatedly, helpless to continue.

Crawly steered him over to the nearest tree and made him sit, the sword trailing in the dirt and collecting dust. “Stay.” When Cain shakily nodded his head, Crawly ran.

The field was a five minute walk from the main camp, the trees giving way to a great grassy space. Crawly had a thousand fond memories here: Adam caked in dirt trying to understand how to grow his own plants, Crawly and Eve competing in races (Crawly cheating by flying), sheep placidly grazing, Abel singing sweetly. It was quiet now, the sheep elsewhere.

“Abel?” he called. Hope scraped up his throat. “Abel!”

No one answered.

Sprawled in the dirt, limbs spilled awkwardly, eyes half-open, the blood. The—the _blood_. Easy to miss until it wasn’t, soaked into the grass, the earth breathing it in. _His_ blood.

Shaking, Crawly knelt next to him, put his hand on his chest, damp blood sticking to his fingers. He was unnervingly still under his hand. Abel squirmed and complained when he was hurt. _Crawlyyy! C’mon, heal it already, please?_ He drew his power up. There was so much of it, an endless supply. He could conjure objects and sustain himself without air or food or water and store his wings on another plane, and all of it was easy. He could heal.

The wound remained open, an ugly gash.

He strained, threw the entirety of his being into it. He could _heal_.

Abel remained still.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please, please please…” The word garbled in his throat as the tears welled up.

“Cain,” he said.

Crawly was only distantly aware of how he had walked back, across the field, through the trees, his left palm dried red.

Cain had stopped sobbing, but his face was barren-bleak, carved open with grief. He leaned his back against the tree.

“Why?” There was nothing else to say. He threw his arm out, ready to scream out his despair instead of asking that useless question. “ _Why?_ ”

“God spoke to us.”

Crawly blinked. “What?”

“Me and…me and Abel thought of something. We both gathered what we could. I had my crops, and Abel had his sheep. We set them out, said some words – we were trying to be grateful. That’s what Mom and Dad are always going on about, being grateful. But we heard a voice.” His voice quieted. “It was Her.”

Crawly sucked in a fast breath but didn’t dare interrupt. Cain was looking away, as if the only way he could continue the story was if he was talking to the air alone.

“She congratulated Abel and ignored me. I was angry. She scolded me for it.” He closed his eyes. He was trying, but the words choked him. “Abel was so happy, it made my blood boil. He kept saying, ‘Cain, isn’t it wonderful? Cain, can you believe it?’ so I said, ‘Let’s go out to the field.’ I thought we would take a walk, and we would move on. But he just kept…” Cain slammed his fist into the tree trunk, once, twice. “He kept talking! I told him, ‘Be quiet,’ and he laughed and started teasing me, _laughing_ , and I…” Finally, he lifted his eyes to Crawly’s. “She spoke to me again when you were gone.”

Crawly stared at him.

“She told me to leave and never come back.”

The words pierced straight through Crawly. That was the move, wasn’t it? Throw them out, you always throw out the troublemakers. Rebellious angels, sinning humans. Throw them out. Abel’s body was branded on the inside of his eyelids, but he told Cain, “I’m so sorry.” He remembered the violence, the Pit, the twisted hatred, the hurt, and it was nothing short of horrific. Crawly couldn’t harden his heart to an empty, merciless world, let alone a person – his _kid_ – sobbing into his hands.

He miracled a bag into his hands: food, water, an extra set of clothes. He stood Cain up, took the sword from his hand and stowed it on his belt, and then pressed the bag into his hands. “I’m so sorry.” He meant it for everything, more than what it could contain. What he’d done, what he’d have to do, the loss, the anger, the pain, the frustration, the horrid knot of it all, so contrary to the purity of simplicity that surely one _must_ be evil in order to feel so twisted up.

Cain looked down at the bag then up to Crawly. He grabbed Crawly’s hand and squeezed it, a loose, shaky grip, and then he turned and walked blindly away.

Crawly’s legs threatened to buckle under him, another set of tears fast brimming up, threatening to overwhelm him, but he pushed it down – the world blurred around him in a moment of disorientation – and walked to Adam and Eve’s camp.

They were busy as always. It was the most admirable thing about them, how they always kept going.

“Crawly!” Eve called, beaming at the demon. The grin slid off her face upon seeing his expression. “Is something wrong?” They gathered in front of him, concern on their brows.

He didn’t want to tell it, but he told it. There was no use in lying. He told it, and the two dashed away to find their son broken, gone, just a thing now rather than a young man with a scruffy beard. He wasn’t smiling, so of course it couldn’t be Abel anymore. The grief felt more, bigger, wider when it was shared, all three of them around the still-bloody corpse. They screamed, “Why? Why would he do this?” and no answer was enough, because no answer was ever enough. They raged, they wept. Crawly could only nod.

When they had exhausted themselves with cries, pulled their hair, their eyes bloodshot, they pulled a blanket over Abel’s body and sat around the fire together.

“I need to…I need to take a walk,” Crawly said. Adam and Eve barely responded, leaning against each other and staring into the flames. They reminded him of how Cain and Abel had been when they were small, yelling and fighting as if they were sworn enemies and then falling asleep together at the end of the day, loving and trusting. He looked away, too pained at the thought. No more reconcilement, no more love could be built on death and ash.

He walked further than he needed to, but the thought of Adam and Eve seeing him do this made his skin crawl. He took one last furtive glance at the trees around him. The light was fading fast but still flickered through the leaves and branches.

With a deep breath, he sank into the ground.

If he hadn’t known he had been gone for over twenty years, he would have guessed it had been a few days since he’d left. Half-finished projects lay abandoned everywhere, the bare stone soaked and stinging under his feet. He hated it instantly, viscerally, almost threw himself up to the ceiling again and back to Earth. But the demon he needed to see barreled into him as they passed.

“Lord Beelzebub—”

“Go find Hastur, moron! Can’t you see I’m buzzzzy?” The fly demon shouldered past him, almost tipping him into a sulfur pit.

So Crawly hurled himself back into the air, angry now. Hell – damned Hell! Terrible, stupid, bad, annoying, proud, _stupid_ Hell. Hastur took another ten minutes to find, and by the time he landed he was in no mood for the frustrating bureaucracy of it all.

“Can we put souls back into bodies?” he asked.

Hastur squinted at him, and the slimy frog on top of his head mirrored him. (Crawly felt a tad offended at the whole get-up. He knew frogs and frogs at their worst were never _that_ disgusting.) “Who are you?”

“Crawly,” Crawly bit out.

“Ah, the moron we sent up to continue the corruption of the humans.” He sniffed. “How’s that going?”

“One of them issss dead!” he shouted, hands curled into claws. He wanted to strike forward, quick and intimidating, to get Hastur to acknowledge his rage, his _grief_.

“How’s one of ’em dead?” Hastur asked, unfazed by Crawly’s posture. Crawly hadn’t been a warrior, hadn’t been much of anything at all; there was no reason to be afraid of _him_.

“His brother killed him, but—but listen, his soul is gone, it left his body. We can retrieve it, his soul, right, and we can put it back, and we—we can manipulate him! I think the idea has real—”

“What’s this about souls? Humans can bloody _lose them_? That’s disgusting. Forget that, tell me more about this human that killed his…‘brother,’ you said? What in Satan’s name is a brother?”

“He’s…” The hope and the fight drained out of him. The answer fumbled out of his mouth as emotion crested in a wave again – he was gone, just gone, Cain and Abel both, both of them destroyed with one blow, how was he supposed to _breathe_. “They’re close. They love each other. Cain…stabbed him. They…”

“Stabbed him! Someone he loved! Oh, now, I like the sound of this Cain chap.” Hastur chuckled darkly. “Good work, Crawly.”

Crawly snapped back to attention. “What?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Hastur admonished with a wrinkled nose. “Just go back up and keep doing good work like that, yeah? First you doom the humans, and then you get them to kill each other. Ha! We’re going to have to keep you up there forever with results like that!” Laughing, Hastur walked away.

Another demon close by leered at him. “Aren’t you the lucky one?” they mocked.

He hated it here. Disgusting, hurtful, base, narrow-minded, _stupid_ Hell!

He flung himself into the air, through the cavern ceiling, and collapsed on the ground. His eyes blurred with tears, clutching leaflitter in his hands. They were gone. He was useless. He couldn’t do anything, and they were _gone_. Gone, gone, gone, _gone_ —

The leaflitter underneath him blurred, morphing into hard-packed dirt, and the dim light of the sunset through the trees was overpowered by the direct cut of the sun on his face. A few dead leaves were still clutched in his hands, and he let them go in dazed fascination. He pushed himself sitting and stared at what he found.

It was like Eden, except…messier. Or maybe less messy. There were less bright colors and flashing metal, donkeys on the narrow street instead of cars. But there were people, _loads_ of people, moving and shouting.

He weakly grasped at the robe of a passing woman. She looked down at him, annoyed, and then froze, staring at him directly in the eye. “Please,” he said, holding onto the edge of her robe tighter before she could pull away and leave. “Please, can you tell me where I am?”

“Enoch,” the woman replied, still transfixed.

“Where are Adam and Eve? Do you know them? I was just—I don’t know how I got here.”

The woman started to tug away now, her mouth twisting with discomfort. “I’m sorry, but you must have gotten hit in the head. I don’t know what you’re on about with Adam and Eve. They’re dead.”

In his shock, he dropped his hand, and the woman walked quickly off.

Dead.

They were all gone, all over again. There was an inexplicable mass of people before his eyes, but they were gone, gone forever. He fell to the side, back to the dust, and stared out at Enoch as it moved on without him.


End file.
